They say a soul weighs 21 grams. This, according to the scientist Duncan MacDougall, is the exact weight people lose the moment they die and their soul escapes.

Of course it could be other, less savoury things escaping the body, but not according to Dr MacDougall, whose 1907 work is perhaps the best proof there is that we do indeed have a soul.

Fast forward 105 years and that exact weight, 21 grams, has raised its head again. That’s the exact difference in weight between the old Samsung Galaxy S II and the new Samsung Galaxy S II 4G. The former tips our scales at 115 grams. The latter, 136 grams. The maths is simple and irrefutable.

Which means that the SGS2 4G (as it’s known), the latest member of Samsung’s very successful Galaxy S family, is a smart phone with a soul. That’s a scientifically verified fact.

It also means that the old SGS2 is either (a) already dead, or (b) a smart phone with no soul, one destined to live in limbo for eternity. Given that the old SGS2 we have been using as part of this review is alive and kicking, one can only conclude that (b) the phone has no soul. That, too, is a scientifically and syllogistically verified fact.

Could it be that, when we removed the original operating system from the old SGS2 for last week’s column, and replaced it with an operating system known as CyanogenMod, we inadvertently killed its soul? I mean, the very word “CyanogenMod" has a rather lethal sound to it, doesn’t it?

Though I must say I find it all rather surprising. After four days of using the new version of the SGS2, I would have sworn it was that phone which lacked soul, not the older model. I would sworn that the thicker, heavier body on the new version lacked the charm of the more svelte body on the old Galaxy. The old phone always felt to me like it could snap in two at any moment, it was so deliciously wafer thin. (Though months of rough treatment, including a recent drop test on to a concrete pavement, have confirmed that the old phone is tougher than it looks.) The new version, in contrast, just feels a little chunky and uninspired.

And I would have sworn that the more up-to-date Android 4.04 software on the old phone (courtesy of that DIY CyanogenMod update) gave the old phone more life than the stodgy old Android 2.3.6 software on the new SGS2 4G. The modified old phone is much nicer to use, much more charming than the new phone.

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Surely being more lively and more svelte amounts to be being more soulful? But the science says no, and who are we to argue with science?

Just take a look at the raw specs. The new SGS2 4G has a 1.5 GHz processor compared with the 1.2 GHz processor on the old SGS2. As the name implies, the new model has an LTE mobile broadband connection, compared with the old HSDPA+ connection on the old model. The new model has a bigger screen (4.5 inches versus 4.3 inches) and has Near Field Communication, something Samsung decided to omit from the Australian version of the original SGS2. Basically, it’s bigger and better in every imaginable way.

So why is it we still prefer the old phone here in the Labs?

Part of it must be that CyanogenMod we added to the old phone. It’s such a good addition to the old phone, it actually makes it operate faster than the new phone with its original software. Take, for instance, the Geekbench 2 benchmark, which measures general processor performance. The new SGS2 4G got an average score of 997 on Geekbench 2, but the old phone scored an average of 1094, a fractionally better result despite having a significantly slower processor. Or take BrowserMark, an application which benchmarks browser performance. The new browser on the old Samsung scored an average of 115,567, almost double the new phone’s score of 63,233.

Clearly, if you’re looking to upgrade your Android phone, you might be better off simply updating the operating system rather than just buying a new phone with a faster processor.

Though of course, you’d be best off getting a new phone with a faster processor and a newer operating system, and in that regard it’s worth noting that Android 4 updates to Galaxy phones are expected to appear this month. The SGS2 4G’s fast hardware with Android 4 could well prove a killer combination, especially when you consider the speed of that 4G connection. In our tests on Telstra’s network, it killed the old phone, giving us download and upload speeds of 26.7 megabits per second and 11.4 Mbps respectively, compared with respective speeds of 7.1 Mbps and 1.1 Mbps on the old phone’s HSPA+ connection. Even uploads on the new Galaxy S II were faster than downloads on the old Galaxy S II.

But even given that, even given an Android 4 update on the new phone, I’m not sure I would prefer it to the old model. There is something about the old Galaxy S 2, something I can’t quite put my finger on, that is just terrific. There’s a lightness about it: 21 grams of lightness, to be precise.